Our unbounded influencence

Very few people appreciate the role music played in lightening the load of our ancestors during slavery better than Colin Smith. 

Smith who was awarded a Badge of Honor by the Jamaican government in 2025 for his role in the preservation of Jamaican culture, is not only the Chairman of the Louise Bennett Heritage Council but is also founder/leader of  the Miami based Tallawah Mento Band. It's in that role that he was recently invited to Costa Rica in April 2026 to address the 2nd Marcus Garvey  Symposium on the topic "How enslaved Africans used music to lighten their burden."

The heart of Jamaican culture in Costa Rica is in the province of Limón where it is estimated that of the over 65,000 population there, 75% have Caribbean ancestry, and also in nearby Puerto Viejo (translation Old Harbour!) where Jamaican colors and food dominate. 

Some Tallawah band members pose beside the sign.

Like so many other places in Central America, thousands of Jamaicans moved there and settled after working on the Panama Canal and they retained their culture.

I first visited Limón decades ago after hitching a ride on a Jamaica Producers vessel which used to go there to fill up with bananas to meet its British quota.

What stood out in my mind then was not only how most people could switch from our patois to grammatical Spanish seamlessly but also how our favorite traditional dishes were easily available everywhere. 

On my second visit, I learned that Hon. PJ Patterson, Prime Minister was honored there in 2001. 

What I never knew then was that Garvey was held up in such high esteem there that each year on the 18th April, they put on activities to honor him. 

He had been working there as a timekeeper and between 1910-1911. When he saw the exploitation of the black workers on the banana plantations there, he not only established a branch of the UNIA but also a hub there for his Black Star Liner.

In 2023, Costa Rica declared Garvey an honorary citizen for his contributions to culture and human rights.

It was no doubt a great honor for the Tallawah Band, one of the last surviving mento bands, to be included in this year's festivities.  

They even performed on their first  night in Costa Rica at La Caribena in the Capital San Jose, before going  

on to Limón. 

The performance there  received overwhelming applause. 

I really don't know that too many of our countrymen really appreciate how our culture is revered in so many corners of the globe and the fact that we may even still have many relatives in diverse places that we know little about.

Below are snippets of Tallawah's performance in Costa Rica. 

Nb. Pics and videos contributed by Anette Smith.

Parker, Colorado

 The weather is still pleasant (60's) so Michele and I headed over to nearby Parker.

This is a tiny Western/Victorian, artistic town of under 70,000 people, Southeast of Denver. And you get a good view of the surrounding Rocky Mountain range from there.

Pleasant place to hang out.

No cel camera can truly capture the beauty of the Rockies!

Then it was on to a lovely Jamaican restaurant.

Reggae Pot not only serves delicious Jamaican food. The red peas soup, oxtail and gungo rice and peas were delicious. 

They also educate patrons about Jamaican music and culture via music boards.

Even met a St. Lucian there.

He's moving to Canada because of Trump though.😁🤣

Good weather, lovely day.

Cruising , the way to go

I think I became addicting to cruises when I went on the first one with my parents when I was 14. In those days I found the huge ship awesome but each year as competition steps up, the cruise industry is growing by huge degrees of awesomeness, with the beneficiaries being those of us who love to travel.

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This latest cruise was my first taste of Disney and it was really great although I must admit if I was a kid it would have been out of the world.

What I enjoyed most was the really great choice of destinations because for me to have gone to Sicily, the French Riviera, Naples, Pompeii, Rome, Venice in one swell swoop is just impossible to beat. And the excellent tour organisations attached to Disney were so efficient and the guides so knowledgeable,  that one was able to gain a great deal of information and see everything that one wanted to at these wonderful destinations.

One important lesson I learnt from this trip (the cruise people did not mention it at all) and I hope I will not forget the next time I go to Europe and that is, in Europe not only is the US$ not king, (as expected) but no one wants to accept it! So wherever we went we had to change cash into Euros to do any business and in Switzerland, we had to change to Swiss francs. (I had a similar experience in Cuba too as there no one wanted it or the Canadian $ either so you had to go to a cambio to change cash into pesos.) 

As I see it therefore, whenever one is not using a credit card in Europe, it is easier to just  travel with a debit card, go to a ATM machine and collect the withdrawal in the relevant currency for each day the ATM's change their rate in keeping with international standards.Anyway, back to destinations, we had quite a scare on the way to Pisa as the front tyre of the bus we were driving in suddenly burst as we were crossing a bridge. The horrendous blast scared the daylights out of not only the passengers, most of whom had been sleeping and had a rude awakening, but also the driver as well. He was however deft in  bringing the bus safely to the side of the road and as we were only 15 minutes away from Pisa we did not have to wait too long to get a replacement bus.

Actually, there is so much to say and remember about the various places we visited that I swear I have to get around to doing a separate blog for each one soon.

What was especially heartening about this cruise too was the number of Jamaicans who were working on the Disney Magic. I never knew before that  there was an actual recruiting centre in Ocho Rios so it was not unexpected that the majority of the workers came from the St. Ann/St. Mary area, although I did meet a few from Kingston  and elsewhere.Even the head waiter assigned to us was from Jamaica and boy did he make it specially great for  us by arranging jerk chicken, stew peas and rice, oxtail etc to be served to us in addition to the other delicious choices at dinner.

Heartening too was the wide selection of reggae music played in the "fun area"on the 9 th floor (Lido deck) almost every day.

It was clear that whoever the DJ was, his favourite singers were Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley but he did not stick on them too much to make it boring for our music going as far back as Harry Belafonte was played at some point.

As I said earlier, if I were a kid the cruise would have been out of this world, and that is of course because the entertainment was geared towards kids so some nights it left me a bit bored.

 However the Disney ensemble outdid itself on two nights with performances fitting of Broadway. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting the lead singer from one of the performances, a beautiful African american young lady named Christine from Michigan, with a voice range equaling Whitney Houston's and she assured me that is where she was headed but was just enjoying travelling for a while.

Yup a Disney cruise is definitely more than worth the money for family travel

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JOAN WILLIAMS, moderator of Joan Williams on Line broadcast on POWER 106, describes herself as an unapologetic addict to the Jamaican outdoors. A foundation member of FUN AND THRILLS ADVENTURE CLUB, she explores the island at any given opportunity cycling, hiking or swimming with that group, family, Jah 3 and anyone else who will have her. In 1995, she published the popular TOUR JAMAICA and the 4^th edition is now an ebook available at;

http://www.amazon.com/Tour-Jamaica-Joan-Williams-ebook/dp/B00EJWCSHS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389464644&sr=8-1&keywords=tou

Jerk Pork at Last

Today is one of the best days of my life in Denver, Colorado. To begin with its a wonderful summer day at last so I decided to ride my bicycle downtown to visit the Art museum. But first I must go pay for my ticket at the Amtrak depot before they raise the price on me again. A few weeks ago I called to find out how much it was return from Denver to Salt Lake City, Utah, and was told $170. When I called to make my reservation today it was $217....a whole $47 more. Absolute highway robbery, but as they say you learn from experience and I did not know that trains set their prices like airlines in that the earlier you book the cheaper it is.

I am only paying the price for this experience because I have not been on a real train (not a subway please!) since I was a teenager and feel like a kid going on my first train ride. I am going to visit my friend Sharon whom I have not seen in probably 20 years and who is now a Mormon living in Salt Lake city. Boy don't I have a lot to learn when I get there. So under those circumstances I had to pay the huge fare increase and not bawl.


Anyway, when I was leaving the train station and going towards the Art museum, I heard music playing loudly and naturally headed in the direction only to run into the Denver Chalk Art fair on 14th Street. The streets were blocked off and people were drawing all sorts of things on the pavements and the road, all in chalk.There was really some good stuff there.

As I once again headed towards the Art Museum, I ran into the People Fair. This is an annual thing where streets around City centre are blocked off and food  and other products are on sale in booths. As I ambled through the crowd, by god, what did I see.....a sign saying Jamaican food. My withdrawal symptoms immediately escalated and I rushed over. Naturally I used my best yardie language and enquired what they had only to be met with a blank stare. So I started my usual tirade about foreigners exploiting Jamaica's good name and reputation only to be joined by a man who assured me in good Jamaican language that it was not so. He said the reason why the people in the booth did not understand me was because they were his family who were born in the USof A.

My first question to him of course was if he had jerk pork and and it was as if God decided to give me a special blessing for his reply was "Den no mus". Oh lord, what sweet words. My next question was about mannish water but drew a blank there. Anyway, I was totally happy to live with mannish waterless jerk pork. I decided to go to the museum first and come back for the jerk pork after, but boy from I got  the ticket I kept thinking of some pork skin and had to just go an get it and postpone the museum tour for a bit.

It turns out the guy's name is Glen and he lives in Colorado Springs. But guess what, he is from Rocky Point in Clarendon. He laughed when I told him Rocky Point people only know to cook fish not pork, but I was perfectly correct for it was not certainly up not up to any quality jerk pork that I know of. Anyway, it had skin and it was crispy so all was immediately forgiven. After all, I have not had a decent piece of pork  (ie.pork with skin!) for almost two months so anything goes at this point.
So I sat down in the park and listened to one of the many bands performing. They weren't too bad and there was a dance area which lots of people were using, so I simply enjoyed the ambiance and the food.

The art  museum is huge with eleven levels of displays ranging from American Indian art to the African experience. This is the second time I have been there and each time it is almost a totally different scenario. I don't think I will ever come back to Denver and not visit that museum.

Designs at the Chalk Art Fair

The artists get down on the pavement at chalk Art fair

So now, finally, I am looking forward to wonderful summer days for the rest of my stay here for although the Denver weather is miserable most of the time, when the summer days come, downtown always has some excellent surprises.